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Meteorology By Aristotle

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Bathos
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« Reply #60 on: August 31, 2009, 12:03:16 am »

Part 2

Let us now explain the nature and cause of halo, rainbow, mock suns,
and rods, since the same account applies to them all.

We must first describe the phenomena and the circumstances in which
each of them occurs. The halo often appears as a complete circle:
it is seen round the sun and the moon and bright stars, by night as
well as by day, and at midday or in the afternoon, more rarely about
sunrise or sunset.

The rainbow never forms a full circle, nor any segment greater than
a semicircle. At sunset and sunrise the circle is smallest and the
segment largest: as the sun rises higher the circle is larger and
the segment smaller. After the autumn equinox in the shorter days
it is seen at every hour of the day, in the summer not about midday.
There are never more than two rainbows at one time. Each of them is
three-coloured; the colours are the same in both and their number
is the same, but in the outer rainbow they are fainter and their position
is reversed. In the inner rainbow the first and largest band is red;
in the outer rainbow the band that is nearest to this one and smallest
is of the same colour: the other bands correspond on the same principle.
These are almost the only colours which painters cannot manufacture:
for there are colours which they create by mixing, but no mixing will
give red, green, or purple. These are the colours of the rainbow,
though between the red and the green an orange colour is often seen.

Mock suns and rods are always seen by the side of the sun, not above
or below it nor in the opposite quarter of the sky. They are not seen
at night but always in the neighbourhood of the sun, either as it
is rising or setting but more commonly towards sunset. They have scarcely
ever appeared when the sun was on the meridian, though this once happened
in Bosporus where two mock suns rose with the sun and followed it
all through the day till sunset.

These are the facts about each of these phenomena: the cause of them
all is the same, for they are all reflections. But they are different
varieties, and are distinguished by the surface from which and the
way in which the reflection to the sun or some other bright object
takes place.
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